Where was the Pat Tillman Story on NFL Sunday?

Dave Zirin
Monday, September 12, 2011
http://www.thenation.com/blog/163328/where-was-pat-tillman-story-nfl-sunday

In 2004, President George W. Bush appeared on the Jumbotron at Arizona’s Sun Devil stadium to address the combat death of former NFL player turned Army Ranger, Pat Tillman. Bush said: “Pat Tillman loved the game of football. Yet, as much as Pat Tillman loved competing on the football field, he loved America even more… Courageous and humble, a loving husband and son, a devoted brother and a fierce defender of liberty. Pat Tillman will always be remembered.”

But Sunday--- while NFL teams around the country commemorated the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks---Pat’s name was only mentioned before the game in Arizona. In stadium after stadium, in pregame show after pregame show, as the NFL’s 9/11 commemoration strategy was rolled out with lockstep discipline, Tillman’s name was conspicuously absent. George W. Bush certainly got his moment in the spotlight, receiving a standing ovation by 70,000 fans at the Meadowlands. On other football fields, massive flags were unfurled, “official NFL/9/11 logos” were unveiled, soldiers were cheered, Reebok’s “We Will Never Forget” 9/11 gear was worn, and yet it was as if Pat Tillman had never existed.

The NFL’s media man, Brian McCarthy, vigorously contested this when we called for comment. “Yesterday was a day to remember to those who lost lives on 9/11...We did not single out any NFL player that had been in the military. We saluted all military members around the country and the world. Pat means so much to the NFL. We have funded the “Pat Tillman USO Center,” a USO center in his name in Afghanistan at Bagram [Airfield]. We also worked with his wife Marie on the creation of the NFL scholarship. The first thing you see in the NFL [New York] building is Pat’s jersey. He is very dear to the. NFL family. We salute him every day. If [you are] trying to create controversy there is none.”

I respectfully disagree. I don’t contest that Tillman’s jersey is in the NFL office, or that “he is honored every day.” But I think it’s worth asking why the NFL paid so little attention to Pat. It’s worth asking because the answer says a great deal. Pat Tillman is the only NFL player – or professional athlete – to die in the theater of war since September 11th, 2001. He walked away from millions of dollars to join the U.S. Army because of the way 9/11 shook his system. On 9/12/01, Tillman gave an interview where he said, “My great-grandfather was at Pearl Harbor and a lot of my family has gone and fought in wars, and I really haven’t done a damn thing.”

Twenty-two months after enlisting, Pat Tillman was dead. His memorial service was aired on national television. The Army awarded him a Silver Star for his “gallantry in action against an armed enemy.” They said Tillman's convoy had been ambushed in Afghanistan. They said Tillman charged up a hill to protect his men but was shot down by the Taliban. Responding to this heroic story, the NFL, as they are quick to mention, created statues and memorials in his honor.

Why didn’t we hear Tillman’s name on Sunday? It’s because the Pentagon’s official story, the very story the NFL initially embraced, is an awful lie. Tillman actually died in friendly fire, a fact that was criminally hidden from his family, his fans, and to the greater public. Tillman also began to turn against the war before his death, telling friends in the Rangers that he believed the war in Iraq was “illegal.” A voracious reader, he started reading anti-war authors in an attempt to wrap his head around how he had become the most famous solider in an endless conflict.

After the Bush administration finally revealed the truth, Tillman’s shocked family and friends did the only thing they could do: fight to find out the real facts of his death. They went public with the narrative of a Pat Tillman that was inconsistent with the Bush administration and NFL’s. They put forth a Pat Tillman that was an intensely iconoclastic atheist, turning against war.

The misrepresentation of Pat Tillman’s death speaks to the lies used to sell war, and to the way people’s rage and grief was exploited in the wake of 9/11. But thanks to the tireless work of his family, and the creators of the documentary The Tillman Story, his true story is now public knowledge. As Pat’s mother Mary said in The Tillman Story, “I think they just thought, if they spun the story and we found out ... we'd just keep it quiet because we wouldn't want to diminish ... his heroism or anything like that ... but, you know, nobody questions Pat's heroics. He was always heroic. What they said happened, didn't happen. They made up a story, and so you have to set the record straight.”

In one respect their effort saved Pat Tillman’s name this past Sunday. In the least it saved his family and friends the pain of knowing that Pat was being displayed in a way he would have found, in the words of fellow Ranger Jade Lane, as “criminal.” But the NFL’s exclusion of Tillman in their commemoration is a statement of its own. They could have discussed Tillman’s service in all its complicated, messy glory. They could have respected his sacrifice as well as his inner conflicts. They could have interviewed the eloquent and elegant Mary Tillman on all the pregame shows. The country could have learned not just about Pat Tillman, but that the former Commander in Chief being cheered at the Meadowlands had committed a felony in falsifying the facts of Tillman’s death. It’s an awful story, but it’s real. It's also far from finished. As The Tillman Story director Amir Bar-Lev said: “This is an unsolved mystery; nobody has ever really paid a price for what was done to the Tillmans. No one has taken accountability or made an admission for a deliberate attempt to conceal the truth. This story is not over yet.”

Dave Zirin is the author of “The John Carlos Story” (Haymarket) and just made the new documentary “Not Just a Game.” Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.

The Tillman Story — Just Gimme Some Truth!

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/08/17

Published on Tuesday, August 17, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
The Tillman Story — Just Gimme Some Truth!
by Rory O'Connor

Of the many lies George W. Bush told us about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, some were larger but none worse than that told about the death of Pat Tillman.

In 2004 - just after Bush's invasion of Iraq, ostensibly in search of those non-existent weapons of mass destruction - Tillman became a military-and media-manufactured symbol of duty, sacrifice, patriotism and heroism. But the truth about Tillman's life is much more complex, and his death ultimately far more heroic, than the convenient, self-serving lie served up by the military and then sent out by our ever-gullible media.

Tillman, a truly remarkable young man who walked away from a multi-million dollar contract as a professional football player to enlist as in the Army Rangers after the 9/11 attacks, is the subject of The Tillman Story, a moving documentary directed by Amir Bar-Lev that opens in theatres in New York and Los Angeles this week. Although the film rightly tells the story of Pat Tillman's remarkable life, it also focuses on a parallel "Tillman story," that of the struggle his family went through to learn the truth about Tillman's death from "friendly fire" and the ongoing cover-up of how and why our military and political leaders lied in order to exploit his heroism for propaganda purposes.

Tillman was on his second tour of duty when he was killed in Afghanistan - a victim of "fratricide," inadvertently killed by his own troops during an ill-fated expedition. Our leaders should have told the truth - namely, that Corporal Tillman's death was a senseless accident coupled with incompetence. Instead they lied - to all of us, but most despicably to his family - rewrote the details of his death, awarding Tillman a posthumous Silver Star, America's third-highest military decoration, and turned the tragedy into an opportunity to promote their endless and unpopular wars.

Why did they lie? No doubt it began because at the time of Tillman's death, in April 2004, the Bush war machine was roiled by a number of negative images that threatened to adversely affect public perception of the war in Iraq. Remember those haunting photographs and videos of the bodies of American contractors strung up in Fallujah? Can you ever forget the searing images depicting abuse by U.S. soldiers working as guards in the Abu Ghraib prison? Adding the news that American soldiers had gunned down a celebrated NFL star certainly wouldn't help the war effort... So Pat Tillman was recast, in death, as a war hero and lesson to us all.

The Tillman Story excels in teaching us other lessons, however - not only about Corporal Pat Tillman, but also about his remarkable family, led by his indefatigable mother Dannie. It shows the arduous journey his family undertook to find the truth about what happened and to have someone held accountable not only for their son's death but also for the added insult of its use as a propaganda tool. Handed a massive, confusing box of intelligence records - thousands of pages of documents about her son's death - Dannie Tillman patiently dug through the voluminous material to uncover the roots of a carefully coordinated cover-up. Her efforts, along with that of Tillman's father and other family members and friends, eventually forced a Congressional hearing into the matter. As the film dramatically demonstrates in its stunning climax, however, the ultimate fix was in... and although the many obvious lies and cover-ups can be tracked up to and even well beyond such military brass as the recently fired general Stanley McChrystal, in the end no one among the higher-ups was ever found blameworthy or even responsible for lying to the Tillman family and the nation.

In lieu of presenting a hagiography, Director Bar-Lev does an excellent job of humanizing Tillman and offering a multi-dimensional look at his actual character. Scenes with Tillman's family as they lovingly describe his character and his close, funny and frequently profane relationship with two brothers (the film is unfortunately and unfairly burdened with an "R" rating as a result) along with testimony from family friends and fellow soldiers paint a clear portrait of who Tillman really was - warts and all. As Bar-Lev points out, Pat Tillman was no "paragon of moral certitude; he was curious and tried to see things from every possible point of view." That impulse is what the director attempts to give back to his subject, after he had been dehumanized and exploited for political gain by America's leaders, aided and abetted as usual by the complicit cheerleaders of the national news media.

"I hope the story of Tillman tells us that heroism and humanity are not contradictory and heroism is complex," Bar-Lev told Documentary magazine. "‘Hero' is a problematic word that says a lot more about the people using it than the person they're speaking about....

"I knew there were myths around his death," Bar-Lev added, "but what began to intrigue me was when we found out there were equally as many myths about his life."

"Ultimately, what I would want to have happen is just the truth," Pat's youngest brother Richard told ESPN.com. "At the end of the day, Pat deserves the truth. This isn't about our family. This isn't about the Tillmans. This is about Pat Tillman. And he deserves the truth, period. He sacrificed so much for his country, and then the government turns around and uses him for propaganda. That is totally unacceptable."

I urge you to go see The Tillman Story, an insightful, powerful and truthful film that not only calls to task the entire chain of command but also questions our very notion of heroism itself - another topic in need of of some determined truth-telling!

Rory O'Connor's blog Media Is A Plural is accessible at www.roryoconnor.org.

New Big Screen Documentary Exposes Pat Tillman Cover-Up

http://www.prisonplanet.com/new-big-screen-documentary-exposes-pat-tillman-cover-up.html
New Big Screen Documentary Exposes Pat Tillman Cover-Up
Evidence strongly indicates Tillman was murdered to prevent him from becoming an anti-war icon
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, June 29, 2010

A new documentary set to hit the big screen this summer lifts the lid on the cover-up behind the death of Pat Tillman, the pro-football star who gave up a lucrative career to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq before preparing to return to the U.S. as an anti-war icon, at which point he was killed in a so-called friendly fire incident that more closely resembled a deliberate assassination.

Whether or not the documentary delves into the question of whether Tillman’s death was a targeted act of murder remains to be seen, but the evidence strongly indicates that Tillman was deliberately assassinated in order to prevent him from becoming an anti-war icon and derailing public support in the United States for the ongoing occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Tillman sacrificed the good life and a multi-million dollar football career in the belief that he was defending his country from outside enemies, and soon after 9/11 turned down a contract offer of $3.6 million over three years from the Cardinals to enlist in the U.S. Army.

It was during Tillman’s second deployment to Afghanistan, after previously serving in Iraq, that he was killed by what the U.S. military initially claimed was a Taliban ambush. It later emerged that the ambush story had been concocted by the Pentagon in an attempt to exploit Tillman’s death for pro-war propaganda. Subsequent investigations claimed that Tillman was killed as a result of a friendly fire accident.

However, in July 2007, the results of an Army medical report found that Tillman had been shot three times in the head with an M16 from a mere 10 yards away, clearly suggesting that the incident was a targeted assassination.

“Army medical examiners were suspicious about the close proximity of the three bullet holes in Pat Tillman’s forehead and tried without success to get authorities to investigate whether the former NFL player’s death amounted to a crime,” reported the Associated Press.

“The medical evidence did not match up with the, with the scenario as described,” a doctor who examined Tillman’s body after he was killed on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2004 told investigators. “The doctors – whose names were blacked out – said that the bullet holes were so close together that it appeared the Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away.”

The report also states that “No evidence at all of enemy fire was found at the scene – no one was hit by enemy fire, nor was any government equipment struck.”

The article also reveals that “Army attorneys sent each other congratulatory e-mails for keeping criminal investigators at bay as the Army conducted an internal friendly-fire investigation that resulted in administrative, or non-criminal, punishments.”

The doctor who autopsied Tillman’s body tried to pursue an investigation into the question of whether Tillman was murdered but was prevented from doing so by higher-ups at the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division.

The motive for the murder would undoubtedly have been Tillman’s plans to return to the U.S. and a vocal critic of the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions.

The evidence points directly to it and the motivation is clear – Tillman abandoned a lucrative career in pro-football immediately after 9/11 because he felt a rampaging patriotic urge to defend his country, and became a poster child for the war on terror as a result. But when he discovered that the invasion of Iraq was based on a mountain of lies and deceit and had nothing to do with defending America, he became infuriated and was ready to return home to become an anti-war hero.

In September 2005, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that a friend of Tillman had set up a meeting with author and prominent war critic Noam Chomsky, which was scheduled to take place after Tillman’s return from Afghanistan. Chomsky confirmed that the meeting was arranged.

As far back as March 2003, immediately after the invasion of Iraq, Tillman famously told his comrade Spc. Russell Baer, “You know, this war is so fucking illegal,” and urged his entire platoon to vote against Bush in the 2004 election.

During a July 2007 appearance on Keith Olbermann’s MSNBC show, four star General Wesley Clark stated that “the orders came from the very top” to cover-up the nature of Tillman’s death as he was a political symbol and his opposition to the war in Iraq would have rallied the population around supporting immediate withdrawal.

Pat Tillman film a haunting blindside

http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-0424-dwyre-20100424,0,1036733.column
Pat Tillman film a haunting blindside
Safety Pat Tillman anchored the Cardinals defense for four seasons after his playing days at Arizona State.
Bill Dwyre
April 24, 2010

I have never quite gotten the Pat Tillman story out of my system. Only now am I understanding why.

It has been six years and two days since he died, his head blown off amid a pile of rocks on the side of a hill in Afghanistan, killed by guys on his own team, other U.S. soldiers. After lying about it, the military eventually called it friendly fire and treated it as a mistake. Horrible, yes, they said. But a mistake.

He was a football hero, a star safety for the Arizona Cardinals. Before that, he was a free spirit linebacker at Arizona State, whose hair flowed out of his helmet and whose tackles left physical and mental imprints.

When he walked away from a fat pro contract to become a soldier, fighting in the front lines of Iraq and Afghanistan, we all swooned. What a guy, what a hero, what a story.

We are so used to pro athletes being incapable of gazing beyond their own navels, unable to fathom anything of importance beyond their next contract and ensuing trip to the jewelry store, that we couldn't get enough of Tillman. Journalism celebrates the unusual, and this sure was.

Like other writers in the West, I had a head start. I had been face to face with Tillman, had met him, had a feel for him. Once, after an otherwise unmemorable UCLA-Arizona State game, my postgame question, as we walked along, brought him to a stop. I had danced around something controversial and he did what no other athlete, before or since, has done. He called me on it.

"That's not what you really want to know," he said. "Ask it again."

I did, this time straight to the point. He answered the same way. I was now a Pat Tillman fan. Veteran scribe learns from long-haired linebacker.

I laughed when he was taken near the end of the NFL draft and the babblers at ESPN assured all that he was too small to make it. They had likely never talked to him, certainly never been hit by him.

I loved the stories about him riding his bike to training camp and, when he drove, parking his junky old car next to the Beemers and Mercedes in the team lot.

When he died, when the tragedy dripped from the front pages and wept from the TV screens, I fell right in line. It was a story of heroics, the red, white and blue kind. It was more apple pie and Chevrolet than Don McLean, more American than John Wayne.

He wasn't just a hero. He was our hero.

In June 2006, I flew to San Jose to see Alex Garwood, Tillman's brother-in-law, who had been acting as a family spokesman in the absence of much speaking of any kind by the rest of the family. Garwood was cooperative, friendly and clearly a person who knew lots more than he was saying. By then, the story of Tillman being killed by the enemy had changed to friendly fire. Still, I didn't press Garwood much. I was looking for tears, when I should have been looking for facts.

My column ran on the Fourth of July. I blathered on about barbecues and water skiing with the family, about cherishing the freedoms we have because of heroes such as Tillman. All I missed were some rockets red glare. I was so pleased with myself. Heroes are a columnist's best friend.

Thursday night, on the sixth year anniversary of Tillman's death, I went to a screening of "The Tillman Story." It is a documentary about the quest of Tillman's mother, Mary (Dannie) Tillman, to get the real facts of what happened on that hillside. Halfway through, I was mortified. I realized why the Tillman story has stayed in my gut.

Dannie Tillman did what a nation full of high-paid, overblown journalists should have done. She went after the real story while the beautiful people on TV and the nerds with notepads broadcast and wrote morality plays. She got in the military's face, in the government's face. She didn't let up. She was doing journalism while journalists were doing what we mostly do now — chase Web hits and take short cuts to higher profits.

A housewife got the real story, or as much of it as anybody probably will. Professionals trained to do so gathered moss and wrote slop.

The youngest of the three Tillman boys, Richard, said of his mother, "She hit the ball out of the park, but the government kept moving the fences back."

The documentary won't be out until August. It won't be in many theaters, and it won't be around for long. You need to watch for it. It will make you angry and ashamed. Like I am.

bill.dwyre@latimes.com

Tillman Family is McChrystal-Clear

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090525/zirin2

Tillman Family is McChrystal-Clear
By Dave Zirin

When NFL player-turned-Army Ranger Pat Tillman died at the hands of US troops in a case of "friendly fire," the spin machine at the Pentagon went into overdrive. Rumsfeld and company couldn't have their most high-profile soldier dying in such an inelegant fashion, especially with the release of those pesky photos from Abu Ghraib hitting the airwaves. So an obscene lie was told to Tillman's family, his friends and the American public. The chicken-hawks in charge, whose only exposure to war was watching John Wayne movies, claimed that he died charging a hill and was cut down by the radical Islamic enemies of freedom. In the weeks preceding his death, Tillman was beginning to question what exactly he was fighting for, telling friends that he believed the war in Iraq was " [expletive] illegal." He may not have known what he was fighting for, but it's now clear what he died for: public relations. Today, after five years, six investigations and two Congressional hearings, questions still linger about how Tillman died and why it was covered up.

Now the man who greased the chain of command that orchestrated this great deception is prepared to assume total control of US operations in Afghanistan: Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal. It was McChrystal who approved Tillman's posthumous Silver Star, a medal given explicitly for combat, even though he later testified that he "suspected" friendly fire.

Yet despite this, both Democrats and Republicans are rushing to heap praise on McChrystal, including Sen. John McCain. It was McCain who rushed to speak at Tillman's funeral and then, when the cover-up became known, pledged to help the Tillman family expose the truth. McCain later turned his back on the Tillmans when they raised the volume and demanded answers. As Pat's mother, Mary Tillman, said last year, "He definitely eased out of the situation. He didn't blatantly say he wouldn't help us, it's just that it became clear that he kind of drifted away."

And now the Tillman family, amidst bipartisan praise for Obama's new general, must once again raise the inconvenient truth.

Pat's father, Pat Tillman Sr., told the Associated Press, "I do believe that guy participated in a falsified homicide investigation."

Mary Tillman, who excoriated McChrystal in her book, Boots on the Ground by Dusk: My Tribute to Pat Tillman, said, "It is imperative that Lt. Gen. McChrystal be scrutinized carefully during the Senate hearings."

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said in response:

We feel terrible for what the Tillman family went through, but this matter has been investigated thoroughly by the Pentagon, by the Congress, by outside experts, and all of them have come to the same conclusion: that there was no wrongdoing by Gen. McChrystal.

Morrell's statement has more spin than a washing machine powered by a V-8 engine. McChrystal has never explained why the early reports of Tillman's death were covered up, why his clothes and field journal were burned and destroyed on the scene or why Pat's brother Kevin, serving alongside him in the Rangers, was lied to on the spot. Even the cover-up was covered up. This should be a cause for dismissal--or indictment--not promotion.

What particularly rankles about Obama's choice of McChrystal, whose background is in the nefarious and shadowy world of "black ops," is that his actions in the Tillman cover-up feel emblematic instead of exceptional.

When an anonymous Army interrogator "at great personal risk" blew the whistle to Esquire in August 2006 on an extensive torture enterprise at Camp Nama, he described the then unknown McChrystal as being an overseer who knew the ugly truth. Torture at Camp Nama included using ice water to induce hypothermia. It was not a rogue operation unless we consider Generals like McChrystal "rogues." As Esquire reported:

Once, somebody brought it up with the colonel. "Will [the Red Cross] ever be allowed in here?" And he said absolutely not. He had this directly from General McChrystal and the Pentagon that there's no way that the Red Cross could get in--they won't have access and they never will. This facility was completely closed off to anybody investigating, even Army investigators.

Later in the piece, when asked where the colonel was getting his orders from the interrogator said, "I believe it was a two-star general. I believe his name was General McChrystal. I saw him there a couple of times."

Clearly President Obama is trying to "own" the war in Afghanistan: upping the troop levels, making it his "central front" in the battle against terrorism and now placing his own general in charge. But the president is also disappointing a generation of antiwar activists who voted for him expecting an end to imperial adventures and torture sanctioned by the executive branch. Now a man who should perhaps be on trial at the Hague is in charge of Afghanistan. Obama needs to know it's not just the Tillmans who are enraged by this terrible choice.

Dave Zirin is the author of “A People’s History of Sports in the United States” (The New Press) Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.

Zinn: 9/11 Truth Is For “Fanatics”

http://www.prisonplanet.com/zinn-911-truth-is-for-fanatics-has-no-practical-political-significance.html

Zinn: 9/11 Truth Is For “Fanatics”, Has “No Practical Political Significance”
New comments cause more outrage after leftist historian said he didn’t care about what really happened on 9/11
Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Friday, Nov 21, 2008

Just days after left-wing anti-war icon Howard Zinn told an audience that he didn’t care if 9/11 was an inside job, he has repeated the sentiment, stating that questions regarding the attacks have “no practical political significance” and that 9/11 truth activists are “fanatics” who are wasting their time.

During a lecture at UQAM university in Montréal, Zinn was once again asked if he would support a new 9/11 investigation.

Zinn responded:

“I have said that what happened on 9/11 deserves to be investigated more than it has been because I don’t accept and believe official investigations and official reports.

But having said that, and I want to say that this has really annoyed a lot of people, but why not, and I will annoy more people by saying that I think there are many people who have become fanatics about 9/11. By fanatics I mean, they think we should drop everything and just concentrate our energies on finding out what happened on 9/11.

I don’t think the question of what really happened on 9/11 is the most important question we can ask.”

Zinn then took a direct swipe at the 9/11 truth movement by stating:

“To tell a movement of citizens in the United States that this is something that we really have to make an issue of, I don’t believe it because we don’t need what happened on 9/11, we don’t need that to tell us about the crimes of the Bush administration.

I believe there are certain things that happen in history and certainly questions that are asked that divert us from the important things that we have to do at hand.

The truth is I don’t think anyone will ever really know what happened on 9/11 just as I don’t think anyone will really know who killed John F. Kennedy, and there are a lot of people who wasted a huge amount of time working on something that did not have any practical political significance.”

Zinn then asserted that his previous comments at a lecture in Colorado has been distorted and that he never said he did not care about 9/11 or the fact that it was in the past.

Zinn’s exact words that day were “I don’t know enough about it (the 9/11 conspiracy) and the truth is I don’t much care, that’s past.”

In our previous article we analysed how other leftist luminaries such as Noam Chomsky have belittled the efforts of 9/11 truth activists and attempted to dismiss the political significance of asking questions and highlighting evidence of government complicity in the attacks, while at the same time clearly acknowledging that the truth remains covered up and withheld.

This cements commentators such as Zinn and Chomsky as intellectual cowards and allows them to be used as leftist gatekeepers by an establishment that even they admit has used 9/11 as a means to facilitate aggressive and monstrous foreign and domestic agendas.

What really happened on 9/11 is not a distraction, it is the key to everything:

Without 9/11 there would be no “war on terror”.

Without 9/11 there would be no “clash of civilizations”

Without 9/11 there would be no war in Afghanistan.

Without 9/11 there would be no war in Iraq.

Without 9/11 there would be no war in Iran.

Without 9/11 there would be no war in… (insert any country classified as part of the “axis of evil” or defined as being “with the terrorists”)

Without 9/11 thousands of U.S. troops would not have been sent to their deaths.

Without 9/11 hundreds of thousands of citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan would not have been sentenced to their deaths.

Without 9/11 there would be no inaction on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Without 9/11 there would be no civilian contractors in Iraq and the scandal that has followed them would have been averted.

Without 9/11 there would be no false military reporting (Pat Tillman, Jessica Lynch), and no crack down on the freedom of the press (banning photographing the returning coffins).

Without 9/11 there would be no Patriot Act.

Without 9/11 there would be no NSA warrantless wiretapping program.

Without 9/11 there would be no Camp Delta and no Camp X-ray at Guantanamo Bay.

Without 9/11 there would be no Military Commissions Act and no coordinated program of extraordinary rendition, indefinite detention and torture of those defined as “enemy combatants”.

Without 9/11 there would be no vast increase in secrecy and complete militarization of intelligence under the newly created office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Without 9/11 there would not be thousands of dead and dying emergency workers who are suffering crippling and fatal respiratory illnesses.

Without 9/11 there would be no vast increase in military and security spending that goes arm in arm with huge cutbacks in other key social programs (such as levees in New Orleans).

Without 9/11 there would have been no total abandonment of fiscal restraint, which has contributed to plunging the nation into an abyss of debt and looks likely to tip the world into a deep recession if not a complete depression.

And on and on and on.

Perhaps most importantly, without 9/11 there would be no “post 9/11 society/mentality”.

The ongoing ignorance of official 9/11 lies will continue to feed the fear and hostility that this post 9/11 environment is founded upon. If it is “fanatical” to attempt to pay attention to the man behind the curtain, so to speak, then every member of the 9/11 truth movement should plead guilty.

The definition of a “fanatic” is, in this writer’s humble opinion, much closer to the actions of the fawning audience at both of Howard Zinn’s afore mentioned lectures, who proceeded to inanely cheer their hero no matter what came out of his mouth.

Much more fanatical are the kind of pocket radicals who latch on to one way of thinking, stick steadfastly to one political paradigm, completely close their minds to the wider picture, proceeding to repeat adfinum to their friends in the “coffee revolution” shops what Zinn, Chomsky, Vidal and their ilk have said, in between conversations about the finer points of Jack Kerouac’s stream of consciousness prose, their understanding of the term ‘multiculturalism’ and the origins of Che Guevara’s seminal manual on the theory and practice of guerrilla warfare.

Such people can groan all they like when questions over 9/11 are raised, it doesn’t change the fact that every single significant action the Bush administration has taken over the last seven years, every attack on freedom and crime against humanity that they have committed stems from the events of 9/11.

Yes Mr Zinn, you have angered a great many politically minded people with your comments, but what do you expect when you state that you do not care about what really happened on the most historically significant day in our recent history, and in the lifetimes of many of us?

Indeed, this is the key to Zinn’s comments. To him, what really happened on 9/11 is not significant because it is HE who represents the past, it is HE who is wasting his time and it is HE who is politically insignificant.

Late Pat Tillman on College Hall ballot

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080312/ap_on_sp_co_ne/fbc_hall_of_fame_ballot

Late Pat Tillman on College Hall ballot
Tue Mar 11, 2008

The late Pat Tillman, a former Arizona State linebacker who gave up a professional football career to join the military, is among 19 players up for election to the College Football Hall of Fame for the first time this year.

The National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame released a ballot Tuesday with 75 players and eight coaches eligible for election to the hall.

Tillman played linebacker for the Sun Devils from 1994-97 and was one of the best defensive players in the Pac-10 over his final two seasons. He was one of the leaders of the last Arizona State team to play in the Rose Bowl. The Sun Devils lost to Ohio State 20-17 in 1997.

Tillman went on to play safety for the Arizona Cardinals, but quit football, giving up millions of dollars in salary, and became an Army Ranger.

He was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan in 2004.

Also among the first-timers in the College Hall of Fame ballot are Kansas quarterback Bobby Douglas (1966-68), Florida linebacker Wilber Marshall (1980-83), Temple running back Paul Palmer (1983-86) and Michigan State linebacker Percy Snow (1986-89).

Lou Holtz, who coached Notre Dame to a national championship and 249 games with six schools, is the only coach appearing on the ballot for the first time.

Other notable players up for election include UCLA quarterback Troy Aikman, West Virginia quarterback Major Harris, Ohio State fullback Jim Otis and Notre Dame Heisman Trophy winner Tim Brown.

Voting will be done by the 12,000 National Football Foundation members and those votes will be submitted to the NFF's Honors Court, which selects the Hall of Fame class.

The class of 2008 will be announced May 1 and inducted Dec. 9 at the NFF awards dinner in New York.

The Assassination Of Pat Tillman

http://rense.com/general77/assassination.htm

The Assassination Of Pat Tillman
8-5-7

WHY WOULD SOLDIERS WITH NOTHING TO HIDE, WHO MIGHT HAVE BEEN INVOLVED IN AN ACCIDENTAL SHOOTING burn Tillman's uniform--and his body armor?

After the shooting, the Rangers destroyed evidence that would be considered critical in any criminal case, the records show. They burned Corporal Tillman's uniform and his body armor. Months later, the Rangers involved said they did not intend to destroy evidence. "It was a hygiene issue,"

TILLMAN WAS ASSASSINATED

He was shot in the forehead, THREE TIMES, and the "official" story, which changes faster than the wind, is that he was shot with an M-16.

THIS IS UTTERLY IMPOSSIBLE.

On fully automatic, from just about any distance, almost anyone with an M-16 can hit a solid target three times in a close proximity. But the FIRST bullet out of an M-16 into Tillman's head wouldn't have left anything else for the other two bullets to hit.

Three different people firing ANY type of weapon would not have been able to make such a pattern in his FOREHEAD, so the three bullets had to have been fired from ONE weapon, by ONE person. I have no idea what type of weapon in a war zone, other than a pistol OR a sniper's rifle, could have made such a pattern.

It was not his fellow troops who executed him. IT WAS AN ASSASSIN WHO HAD SUCH CLOSE TIES TO THE WHITE HOUSE OR THE RUMSFELD WOLFOWITZ DoD that they managed to "cover up" DOZENS of signs of his ASSASSINATION, for YEARS now, to the point that MANY GENERALS are LYING, too, and refusing to APPEAR BEFORE, Congress?

The recent World Net Daily piece firstly fails to address clear indications that Tillman was murdered, as unveiled by Army medical doctors; that Tillman was triple-tapped to the head from just ten yards and that the bullet holes were very close together. Medical examiners were very suspicious and suspected murder, but were blocked from investigating the angle by higher-ups.

The report also stated that no evidence of enemy fire was found at the scene, calling the explanation of friendly-fire into question.

The Associated Press story also revealed that "Army attorneys sent each other congratulatory emails for keeping criminal investigators at bay as the Army conducted an internal friendly-fire investigation that resulted in administrative, or non-criminal, punishments."

Anyone who considers the new evidence, along with the obvious motivation for killing Tillman - the fact that he was about to return home and become an anti-war icon, and rules out the obvious explanation of murder is in a severe state of denial.

WND scoffs at the notion that Wesley Clark, during an appearance on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann recently, entertained the notion that Tillman could have been murdered and that a high level cover-up may have been at work.

Anyone who watches the video and reads the transcript can readily ascertain that the context of Olbermann and Clark's conversation is clearly whether or not Pat Tillman was murdered and if that was covered up.

"Does it not begin to look more and more like that, that we were going the wrong direction in this, that they were not trying to protect something, something slightly negative from coming out, but in fact coming- protecting the accusation that his mother has made and has not gotten a lot of attention to that, that perhaps he was indeed murdered?" Olbermann asks Clark.

"It's very possible," responds Clark.

Last year, we caught World Net Daily inventing evidence to smear 9/11 truth when they claimed that Professor Steven Jones had called "for the violent overthrow of the government" at a conference in LA.

Tillman Comrade Recalls Final Moments

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070729/D8QM1Q380.html

Tillman Comrade Recalls Final Moments
Jul 29, 2007
By MARTHA MENDOZA

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - As bullets flew above their heads, the young soldier at Pat Tillman's side started praying. "I thought I was praying to myself, but I guess he heard me," Sgt. Bryan O'Neal recalled in an interview Saturday with The Associated Press. "He said something like, 'Hey, O'Neal, why are you praying? God can't help us now.'"

Tillman's intent, O'Neal said, was to "more or less put my mind straight about what was going on at the moment."

"He said, 'I've got an idea to help get us out of this,'" said O'Neal, who was an 18-year-old Army Ranger in Tillman's unit when the former NFL player was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan in April 2004.

O'Neal said Tillman, a corporal, threw a smoke grenade to identify themselves to fellow soldiers who were firing at them. Tillman was waving his arms shouting "Cease fire, friendlies, I am Pat (expletive) Tillman, damn it!" again and again when he was killed, O'Neal said.

A chaplain who debriefed the entire unit days after Tillman's death later described this exchange to investigators conducting a criminal probe of the incident. But O'Neal strongly disputes portions of the chaplain's testimony, outlined in some 2,300 pages of transcripts released to the AP this week by the Defense Department in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

The chaplain told investigators that O'Neal said Tillman was harsh in his last moments, snapping, 'Would you shut your (expletive) mouth? God's not going to help you; you need to do something for yourself, you sniveling ..."

"He never would have called me 'sniveling,'" O'Neal said. "I don't remember ever speaking to this chaplain, and I find this characterization of Pat really upsetting. He never once degraded me. He's the only person I ever worked for who didn't degrade anyone. He wasn't that sort of person."

The chaplain's name is blacked out in the documents.

Tillman gave up a multimillion-dollar football contract to enlist with his brother in the Army after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The military initially told the public and the Tillman family that he had been killed by enemy fire. It was only weeks later, when the truth was about to be published, did the Pentagon acknowledge that he was gunned down by fellow Rangers.

The Pentagon conducted a criminal investigation and ruled that Tillman's death at the hands of his comrades was a friendly-fire accident.

Congress is preparing for another hearing this week, while the Pentagon is separately preparing a new round of punishments.

Soldiers and commanders who worked with Tillman have repeatedly testified that he was respected, admired and well-liked.

In the same testimony, medical examiners said the bullet holes in Tillman's head were so close together that it appeared the Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away.

O'Neal said the shooters were "close, close enough for me to recognize them, but they sure weren't 10 yards away. They were further than that. I've thought about this plenty of times. They wouldn't have been more than 50 yards away."

Another key issue raised in the transcripts involved never-before-mentioned snipers who were apparently there when the firing broke out, got out of their vehicle and walked alongside the convoy, cutting up the canyon firing.

O'Neal said Saturday that he knew there were snipers in the convoy that fired at them, but that he can't remember their names. Were they fired at by the snipers? "Not that I know of," O'Neal told the AP.

His recollections of the snipers reflected other testimony in the transcripts, including answers given by Capt. Richard Scott, who conducted the first, immediate investigation:

Q: Are you aware whether or not any U.S. forces snipers were at the scene?

Scott: They were in serial two.

Q: And, and do you know whose GMV (ground mobility vehicle) they were traveling in?

Scott: I don't think they were in a GMV. I think they were in a cargo Humvee.

Q: Okay. Do you know if the snipers fired any rounds during this incident involving CPL Tillman?

Scott: I do not, no.

Tillman Death: Friendly Fire or "Friendly" Fire?

Tillman Death: Friendly Fire or "Friendly" Fire?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070727/ap_on_re_us/tillman_friendly_fire

AP: New details on Tillman's death
By MARTHA MENDOZA, AP National Writer
7-27-7

Army medical examiners were suspicious about the close proximity of the three bullet holes in Pat Tillman's forehead and tried without success to get authorities to investigate whether the former NFL player's death amounted to a crime, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

"The medical evidence did not match up with the, with the scenario as described," a doctor who examined Tillman's body after he was killed on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2004 told investigators.

The doctors — whose names were blacked out — said that the bullet holes were so close together that it appeared the Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away.

Ultimately, the Pentagon did conduct a criminal investigation, and asked Tillman's comrades whether he was disliked by his men and whether they had any reason to believe he was deliberately killed. The Pentagon eventually ruled that Tillman's death at the hands of his comrades was a friendly-fire accident.

The medical examiners' suspicions were outlined in 2,300 pages of testimony released to the AP this week by the Defense Department in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

Among other information contained in the documents:

• In his last words moments before he was killed, Tillman snapped at a panicky comrade under fire to shut up and stop "sniveling."

• Army attorneys sent each other congratulatory e-mails for keeping criminal investigators at bay as the Army conducted an internal friendly-fire investigation that resulted in administrative, or non-criminal, punishments.

• The three-star general who kept the truth about Tillman's death from his family and the public told investigators some 70 times that he had a bad memory and couldn't recall details of his actions.

• No evidence at all of enemy fire was found at the scene — no one was hit by enemy fire, nor was any government equipment struck.

The Pentagon and the Bush administration have been criticized in recent months for lying about the circumstances of Tillman's death. The military initially told the public and the Tillman family that he had been killed by enemy fire. Only weeks later did the Pentagon acknowledge he was gunned down by fellow Rangers.

With questions lingering about how high in the Bush administration the deception reached, Congress is preparing for yet another hearing next week.

The Pentagon is separately preparing a new round of punishments, including a stinging demotion of retired Lt. Gen. Philip R. Kensinger Jr., 60, according to military officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the punishments under consideration have not been made public.

In more than four hours of questioning by the Pentagon inspector general's office in December 2006, Kensinger repeatedly contradicted other officers' testimony, and sometimes his own. He said on some 70 occasions that he did not recall something.

At one point, he said: "You've got me really scared about my brain right now. I'm really having a problem."

Tillman's mother, Mary Tillman, who has long suggested that her son was deliberately killed by his comrades, said she is still looking for answers and looks forward to the congressional hearings next week.

"Nothing is going to bring Pat back. It's about justice for Pat and justice for other soldiers. The nation has been deceived," she said.

The documents show that a doctor who autopsied Tillman's body was suspicious of the three gunshot wounds to the forehead. The doctor said he took the unusual step of calling the Army's Human Resources Command and was rebuffed. He then asked an official at the Army's Criminal Investigation Division if the CID would consider opening a criminal case.

"He said he talked to his higher headquarters and they had said no," the doctor testified.

Also according to the documents, investigators pressed officers and soldiers on a question Mrs. Tillman has been asking all along.

"Have you, at any time since this incident occurred back on April 22, 2004, have you ever received any information even rumor that Cpl. Tillman was killed by anybody within his own unit intentionally?" an investigator asked then-Capt. Richard Scott.

Scott, and others who were asked, said they were certain the shooting was accidental.

Investigators also asked soldiers and commanders whether Tillman was disliked, whether anyone was jealous of his celebrity, or if he was considered arrogant. They said Tillman was respected, admired and well-liked.

The documents also shed new light on Tillman's last moments.

It has been widely reported by the AP and others that Spc. Bryan O'Neal, who was at Tillman's side as he was killed, told investigators that Tillman was waving his arms shouting "Cease fire, friendlies, I am Pat (expletive) Tillman, damn it!" again and again.

But the latest documents give a different account from a chaplain who debriefed the entire unit days after Tillman was killed.

The chaplain said that O'Neal told him he was hugging the ground at Tillman's side, "crying out to God, help us. And Tillman says to him, `Would you shut your (expletive) mouth? God's not going to help you; you need to do something for yourself, you sniveling ..."
___
Associated Press reporters Scott Lindlaw in Las Vegas and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this story.

Rambo image was based on lie

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329790868-103681,00.html

Rambo image was based on lie, says US war hero Jessica Lynch
· Tale of heroics was untrue, Congress hearing told
· Dead corporal's brother says military misled public
Ewen MacAskill in Washington
Wednesday April 25, 2007
The Guardian

A female US soldier who came to personify the US invasion of Iraq yesterday appeared before a Congressional hearing to reject the Pentagon's portrayal of her as "Rambo from West Virginia", shot down in a blaze of glory.

Appearing as a witness at the Congressional committee investigating military misinformation from the battlefield, Jessica Lynch said: "Tales of great heroism were being told. My parent's home in Wirt county [West Virginia] was under siege of the media all repeating the story of the little girl Rambo from the hills who went down fighting. It was not true."

Ms Lynch was a 19-year-old private captured by Iraqis in an ambush at Nassiriya in the opening days of the war and subsequently rescued by US forces.

She told the committee: "I have repeatedly said, when asked, that if the stories about me helped inspire our troops and rally a nation, then perhaps there was some good.

"However, I am still confused as to why they chose to lie and tried to make me a legend when the real heroics of my fellow soldiers that day were, in fact, legendary." She said the US people did not need to be told "elaborate tales". She concluded: "The truth of war is not always easy to hear but it always more heroic than the hype."

When she was captured at Nassiriya, the US military told the media she had been wounded but carried on firing until the end.

She had in fact been riding in a truck and had not been firing a weapon. The US military also presented her escape as a heroic feat, ignoring the role of friendly Iraqi medical staff in the rescue.

Ms Lynch said she was not politically motivated and supported the troops in Iraq. But she added: "I believe this is not a time for finger pointing. It is time for the truth, the whole truth, versus misinformation and hype."

The House committee on oversight and government reform, chaired by the energetic Democrat Henry Waxman, is focusing on two incidents, Ms Lynch's capture and rescue, and the death of an army corporal, Pat Tillman, a former football star, in Afghanistan in 2004. Corporal Tillman's death attracted media attention because he had turned down a $9m (£4.5m) football contract to volunteer for service.

Mr Waxman accused the government of inventing "sensational details and stories" about Cpl Tillman and Ms Lynch.

Although the US defence department reported Cpl Tillman had been killed by enemy combatants while leading an attempt to rescue US troops, five weeks later it finally emerged he was killed by friendly fire.

His younger brother, Kevin, also giving evidence yesterday, accused the US military of "intentional falsehoods" and "deliberate and careful misrepresentations" in portraying his death as the result of heroic engagement with the enemy.

"We believe this narrative was intended to deceive the family but more importantly the American public," he said. "Pat's death was clearly the result of fratricide [friendly fire]."

Kevin, who had been in a convoy behind his brother, said the heroic account was to distract attention from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and other setbacks in Iraq. "Revealing that Pat's death was a fratricide would have been yet another political disaster in a month of political disasters ... so the truth needed to be suppressed."

He said the military attempted to give the killing "a patriotic glow", awarding his brother a Silver Star and concocting a story that was complete fiction.

In Iraq yesterday, the US military said that nine paratroopers had been killed in a suicide attack on army outpost at Diyala, north of Baghdad, one of the most lethal attacks on US personnel since the invasion.